Brave New World

Canvas Gallery - Karachi 2021

A city’s identity is constantly evolving with every political, social, and cultural event altering it according to its magnitude. Sometimes the shift is subtle and is not felt by the inhabitants as they subconsciously accept changes and adapt to the new normal. In hindsight we maybe able to point out events that left their mark on city’s character, but perhaps it would be impossible to point out when exactly citizens adjusted their behaviour. When did we become wary of public spaces… less inclusive and more suspicious? It is perhaps impossible to find out when we traded walking for the safety of vehicles, raised our walls and put a barbed wire over the gate. When did security guards become essential part of the staff in every residential colony and at every institution?

We increasingly feel less control over the environment and surroundings that we live in and we compensate it by putting security infrastructure of several forms, sizes and colors. Once an occasional occurrence, it has become omnipresent in present day Karachi. At some point in time, citizens accepted these structures as building blocks of a new form of architecture, a new language!

Seema Nusrat’s study of this language examines the culture of security which has become integral to the architecture of Karachi. Two elements of her interests are watchtowers and road blockers, with their pattern of yellow and black lines reading as caution signs before residential quarters, public spaces and significant institutions - their overwhelming presence and permanence often overshadowing the very architecture that it evolved in the surrounding space.